News and notes from the bleeding edge of Revelation Software development

Password-style EditLines

During the recent Antipodean roadshow a request was made for some new EditLine functionality typically found on mobile operating systems such as Android. Specifically this was to provide a way for a password-style edit control to allow each typed character to be shown briefly before being masked like so:

New Password Functionality

Thankfully this was a relatively simple request and we soon added two new properties to implement this:

PASSWORDSTYLE

PASSWORDPEEKTIME

PASSWORDSTYLE Property

This is a boolean property that changes the EditLine into a password-entry style control when set to TRUE. When set to FALSE the control acts as a normal EditLine. This property can be set at runtime to mask or unmask the entire password if desired.

PASSWORDPEEKTIME Property

This property contains the number of milliseconds to display an entered character before masking it. When set to 0 the entered character is never displayed. This property also requires PASSWORDSTYLE to be set to TRUE, otherwise it has no effect.

(Disclaimer: This article is based on preliminary information and may be subject to change in the final release version of OpenInsight 10).

Digging into this a little further it appears that it’s a Windows 8.x feature – but it seems restricted to XAML and IE (PasswordBox control) and it’s also controlled by a group policy setting. Still no mention of Win32, and I don’t see any changes to an OI Password Edit when run under Win8.